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What do do in the afternoon before Bago & Rixfordthe next day? Goat Mountain is a classic big and sustained Sierra hill climb with an outstanding panoramic view of the High Sierra at the top. From Road’s End in Kings Canyon to the summit is 7,000 ft of vertical in around 11 miles and the grade is steep at times. The majority of the gain is accomplished on the well-traveled Copper Creek Trail departing from Road’s End. The first switchbacks can be quite hot midday as I discovered, but there are excellent views of Kings Canyon including the Grand Sentinel immediately across the Canyon. As one ascends, the vegetation gradually changes to pine and fir trees and the temperature cools.

About 7.5 miles from the trailhead just below the pass that drops into Granite Basin, leave the trail and take a faint use path north (or go cross country) toward a meadow area containing the fork of Copper Creek that drains Grouse Lake. Along this traverse there are lovely views of Mount Clarence King and Mount Gardiner. A short ascent from this meadow leads to beautiful Grouse Lake which is surrounded by granite slabs and clumps of pine trees in quintessential Sierra fashion. From above Grouse Lake there are nice views of the Great Western Divide. It’s all cross country past Grouse Lake up the basin, but the terrain is easy with friendly, low angle granite slabs virtually the entire way up to the foot of Goat Mountain. The lower part of the final ascent up Goat is loose but becomes more solid in the upper portion with large talus blocks near the top. The view from Goat Mountain’s summit is simply amazing and worth the return trip so soon after my climblast Octoberas part of the Monarch Divide Semi-Loop. It’s truly a remarkable point with a sweeping panorama from the Evolution area to the Kaweahs. The centerpiece of the view overlooks the South Fork Kings Canyon and the Muro Blanco with the peaks of the King Spur most prominent, including Mount Clarence King, Mount Cotter and Mount Gardiner. I also enjoyed the view looking to the Kings-Kern Divide including Mount Stanford, Caltech Peak and Mount Ericsson. Beyond the Kings-Kern Divide Mount Williamson and Mount Whitney were clearly visible. The good news is that once you’re on top of Goat Mountain, it’s virtually all downhill back to Road’s End. The Copper Creek Trail is fairly nice for downhill running with no brush and less rocks than some of the other trails out of Kings Canyon. GPS route here.

Cherry Creek Canyon is a granite moonscape with fascinating glacial features and stunning scenery that is unlike anywhere else in the Sierra. In other words, it’s ridiculously cool! Located in the Emigrant Wilderness near the border with Yosemite National Park, it’s surprising this canyon was not included within the park, but I’m guessing the line-drawers had no idea what the terrain was like. The ice-polished granite that characterizes 99% of the surface area in upper Cherry Creek Canyon is so white and smooth that it’s easily recognizable from space on visible satellite, clearly standing out from the rest of the range. On the way out via the Kibbie Ridge Trail we learned that Cherry Creek Canyon is known as the “miracle in the Sierra” or the “holy grail” in the whitewater kayaking community and is among the best in the world for Class V+ expedition kayaking (a group from New Zealand was preparing to put in the next day). It’s not easy to access this trail-less canyon on foot either with portions of thick brush, rock scrambling, and route finding, especially in early season when the stream cannot be forded. However, high flow is the most picturesque time to visit the Canyon as the watercourse becomes a trickle in late summer. The highlight of the route is known as the “Cherry Bomb,” a spectacular narrow “S” shaped gorge with sheer granite on both sides. While we visited the canyon in the short period when the water flow is ideal for kayaking, we did not see any active kayakers on the stream, and in fact, we didn’t see anybody until we were descending the Kibbie Ridge trail.

Most of the complexities in the canyon are located in its lower portion, including annoying and unavoidable brush patches, routefinding, and a rock scramble. The upper part of the canyon is fairly striaghtforward cross-country travel on granite slabs. I noticed a potential route into the upper part of the canyon that would avoid most of the complexities but not sacrifice the best part of the scenery in the upper canyon. This route would utilize the Kibbie Ridge trail up to Lookout Point and then descend through forest and slabs to a part of the canyon known as the Flinstones. I will likely try this approach next time. We found that Cherry Creek was not fordable and when we encountered an impasse about three-quarters of a mile from the top of the Canyon, we instead ascended the ridge line to Mercur Lake. Along the ridge there were breathtaking views of Cherry Creek Canyon and granite as far as the eye could see. The region also contains some spectacular lakes nestled amid the granite slabs. Last year, we visited Big Lake and Hyatt Lake and I look forward to returning to the region to explore Boundary Lake, Spotted Fawn Lake and Inferno Lakes.